Making amends is about owning-up for bad behaviour that hurt someone else. It’s about looking them right between the eyes and acknowledging “I did exactly this, and you bore the cost of my wrongdoing.”

In the Secular Twelve Steps, making amends is Step Nine, the final stop along the journey of ‘cleaning-up the wreckage of the past’. Step Nine is also a pivot away from the self-exploration of the first eight Steps, instead looking outward to rejoin the human race.

The first eight Steps, however, are absolutely necessary to get to this point. One cannot make amends for harms done without a lucid understanding of one’s own character, especially an intimate knowledge of how the addictive drive can warp certain instincts out of balance. Blogging here has also helped me tremendously in this process. Hopefully my sharing may help one or two readers as well.

In Steps Four through Eight we do the work, along with a trusted guide (usually a sponsor), of looking deeply into our histories and identifying patterns of destructive behaviour. We come to understand which instincts went all askew. Fear, pride, emotional insecurity, and selfishness are just a few of the character traits that underlie the harmful acts. In my case, each of those warped instincts loomed large in my conflicts and collisions with others.

We can’t attain any degree of true compassion for the Other until we come to understand exactly how it must feel to be harmed by our actions. Before making amends, we put ourselves in their shoes and try to imagine how it must have felt to be treated so. To assist us with that, taking the previous Steps provide insight and clarity. Through the work of the Steps Four through Seven, we have changed for the better. We can’t make amends for behaviour we continue to act-out. That’s why making amends is the Ninth Step. When we express our regret, declare where we went wrong, how our bad behaviour caused pain and destruction, and identify and explain the root causes (fear, pride, insecurity, dishonesty, etc.) we own-up to harms done.

When making amends, it is never about the booze and/or drugs. Yes, ingesting substances hurt us, but it was our behaviour that hurt them. This is all about them, now. We don’t even bring substances up. No matter our state of mind or mood at the time, it was our conduct was that was harmful to them. We don’t use drinking/using as a crutch when making amends.

Working the Steps with a sponsor who has completed the Steps (at least once!) is never more crucial than at this juncture. We don’t make our list of those we’ve harmed then run out the door to seek them out and apologize.

Without preparation, discussion, and planning, the process of making amends can easily go awry. To maintain compassion for the Other while speaking of harms we have done demands rigorous self-discipline in the present moment. It’s so easy to lapse into self-centredness, which makes it even harder to focus on the other person. It’s often helpful to go over the amends with a sponsor, even roleplay to rehearse them.

Recently, I was given the opportunity to sit down with someone in order to make amends. It was long overdue, but I was nonetheless granted the chance to do so. To no surprise, this person had years ago already done the work to heal, to move on, and is in a much better place today.

A few days prior, I had spent a couple of hours with my sponsor discussing the forthcoming amends. I needed to become sure that I understood that this was all for them and about them, and (for once) not about me. My ego fought me as it has every step along the way! Even though I felt that so much was riding on this, I had to be sure that I wasn’t going to steer the amends or attempt to manipulate some desired outcome.

What happened after the amends surprised me: they said that it may help to enrich the healing work they have already done. They have their own struggles, their own journey. The simple act of one long-overdue amends from a ghost from the past might have brought them clarity on things that happened during the intervening years.

Life is, after all, a spiral dance—the healing work we do remains an open book that can be revisited and revised. Healing is an iterative process. A healing act in the present can trickle-back into work already done in the past and enhance it. We then see our past selves in a different light, and that can change how we see ourselves in the present.

Our stories are always changing. An amends today can change our perspective on the storyline of the past in remarkable ways. We can overwrite memory with a ‘difference that makes a difference’, impacting all our relations in the past, present, and into the future.

As for me, I am now unburdened of the shame and guilt for my destructive actions toward them in the past. By taking this Step with this person, I can see reflected in their eyes that I am not the same person I was before, that I have indeed changed. I see our time together in a different light now. My memory is free of the looming dark cloud that has hovered it over so many years. My heart feels lighter, cleansed of remorse.

Without amends there is no real closure. During my drinking days, I drank to forget. I didn’t know how to deal with resentment and remorse other than drowning it out with booze. Even clean and sober, I am able find ways to run and hide from emotions that I have trouble feeling, like loneliness or regret. That’s why the Secular Twelve Steps work so well for this addict in recovery.

As a result of making amends, I have been given a new freedom—the space I had rented out in my head and in my heart for so long is now cleansed and free to bask in the joy of the ever expanding present and leave the past where it belongs.

I was fortunate to have a positive outcome, but it doesn’t matter whether or not the other person forgives. Restitution fosters self-forgiveness, and that is the key. The act of making amends today can change how we re-experience the past whenever we remember.

By digging through muck of my remorse to identify and specify the facts of my bad behaviour, bringing them into the light through sharing with another, and finally facing the music and paying my debt to the one harmed—we find freedom in true and lasting self-forgiveness.